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WSL with CUDA support

152 points by peatmonster ↗ HN
Windows Subsystem for Linux with CUDA support + TensorFlow

Let me save you many hours of pain and just give you the rundown.

* You MUST be on Windows 10 21H2 or above. 21H2 cannot currently be updated to (yeah, it's because they are pushing Windows 11) so you need to download it as an ISO.

* Install the latest "game ready driver" for your card (you don't need a special driver despite the nvidia documentation, I got mine here: https://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx).

* In general you should ignore the nvidia documentation as they make it almost impossible to figure out what combination of cuda & cudnn versions you need.

Steps to install:

1. Open CMD as administrator.

2. Run: wsl --install -d ubuntu

3. Open the Ubuntu WSL and enter the following commands:

# Install CUDA

sudo apt-key adv --fetch-keys http://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/repos/ubun...

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/repos/ubun... /" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/cuda.list'

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get --yes install cuda-toolkit-11-2 cuda-toolkit-11-2

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/machine-learnin... /" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nvidia-machine-learning.list'

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt install cuda-11-2 libcudnn8 libcudnn8-dev

sudo apt install libnvinfer8 libnvinfer-dev libnvinfer-plugin8

# Verify CUDA installation

cd /usr/local/cuda-11.2/samples/4_Finance/BlackScholes

sudo make

./BlackScholes

# Install TensorFlow

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install python3-pip python3-dev

pip3 install tensorflow-gpu

If you are reading this in the future I have some advice:

* Look at this page to get at least an idea of what versions of cuda and cudnn will work together: https://www.tensorflow.org/install/source#gpu

* Use apt-cache search <THING> to see the possible versions, allowing you to guess what you need to install. Good luck.

94 comments

[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 145 ms ] thread
teruakohatu
Why does this not work on Windows 11?
peatmonster
Correction: I assume it does but I didn't want to install Windows 11, nor do I meet the requirements.
slenk
Are you saying you tried or just based off what he said about using Windows 10? I would assume it would work on 11
peatmonster
* I have not tried Windows 11, I assume it works. * The minimum version that works is Windows 10 21H2. * Some sources say you need a newer build, they are wrong, my OS build: 19044.1469
yjftsjthsd-h
If I may make some minor cleanup/style suggestions?

* You can do the key fetch, populate both apt sources.list.d files, then do a single `apt-get update && apt-get install --yes` rather than 3 updates and 4 installs.

* You're using both `apt` and `apt-get` and only using `--yes` once (obviously fixed by taking the previous point, but while I'm mentioning things...)

* If all but the last two steps use sudo, maybe consider just making the first step `sudo su` and then `exit` when you're done (very context dependent, but does let you skip needing `sh -c` to populate files)

None of this is anything against you, just some possible improvements to have fewer steps and general stuff I'd mention in a normal code review. And full marks for, y'know, actually documenting it at all and sharing:)

peatmonster
These are all good suggestions in the cold hard light of day :) but I unfortunately can't edit my post.
dang
I'll reopen it for editing. If you have any trouble email hn@ycombinator.com.
capableweb
It'd be great if the lines were prefixed with four spaces (" ") so the URLs don't get shorted as well.
lmeyerov
Did this a few weeks ago as part of the ~annual check to see if we finally support non-linux local dev for graphistry folks. Super promising, some tweaks:

- WSL2. Kernel virtualization feels as native as advertised, e.g., docker in wsl2/ubuntu is fast like docker in native ubuntu, vs. the slowness that is docker in os x

- Ubuntu 20.04 works, if I remember right

- We don't worry as much about library-level versions b/c we run via docker

- OpenCL does not work. There's some bits about intel & amd GPUs, but nada on nvidia

- Many nvidia-smi diagnostics do not work... and many ecosystem libraries assumed they did for stuff like initialization & memory management & monitoring. Prepare for whackamole of updating pydata etc. dependencies to ~December+

- TBD for GPU K8S; KinD/K3D seem likely via docker runtime passthrough, but minikube & friends seem riskier. Curious if anyone has that working in a non-painful setup, esp. w/ cross-container GPU sharing..

We still can't fully use+endorse WSL2 support for Nvidia hardware due to lack of even super minimal OpenCL versions, and risky core diagnostics surprises, but encouraging!

(Good time to shout: if you're curious about end-to-end client/server GPU computing and already active on opengl/webgl, we're looking for someone into helping the next 100X of our viz engine!)

my123
> OpenCL does not work. There's some bits about intel [& amd] GPUs, but nada on nvidia

This is planned to be fixed. WSL2’s GPU support currently doesn’t provide a path to provide an alternate OpenCL loader ICD location. (And not for OpenGL either)

Microsoft is developing CLon12 at https://github.com/microsoft/OpenCLOn12 as the option to provide OpenCL out of the box.

happycube
Huh... bit of a way off, but that could lead to a rather convoluted way to implement OpenCL on Vulkan (CLon12->DXVK)
my123
D3D12 has more compute features than Vulkan has. It works out for DXVK because games often don’t use those, but it’ll cause much more issues with CLon12.

By the way, if you are ready to have a _limited_ implementation without a full feature set because of Vulkan API limitations, clvk is a thing. The list of limitations of that approach is at https://github.com/google/clspv/blob/master/docs/OpenCLCOnVu...

tldr: Vulkan and OpenCL SPIR-V dialects are different, and the former has significant limitations affecting this use case

low_tech_love
Being using it for a while and I’m extremely satisfied. Having an Ubuntu terminal on Windows with native performance made me uninstall a bunch of windows stuff and now I’m back to my unix working routine. Couldn’t be happier to be honest.
erikbye
What did you uninstall?
low_tech_love
Node, python, git, etc Basically everything that I can use on the wsl command line.
omegalulw
I don't get why you won't just use Ubuntu or dual boot. Why WSL?
nikau
What if you need to run word or Visio or a million other windows only apps?
ChuckNorris89
Or what if you prefer the Windows desktop vs the Linux alternative, or if your laptop has some obscure driver issues on Linux that are making you miserable, or what if your org only issues Windows machines with the infra built around the Microsoft ecosystem (SharePoint, Office,etc) or a million other reasons why people use Windows.

Why do some people need to be so obnoxiously judgemental about other people's choice of OS?

dTal
Because it's adversarial. Your choice to use one OS makes it more difficult, in a tiny way, for me to use a different OS. You will write software for that OS. You will convince others to use that OS. You will tell your boss to get computers with that OS installed, and then other people at your job will have to deal with it. And every developer on that OS is one that isn't using, writing software, fixing problems etc on my OS. It's political. It's zero-sum. And Microsoft knows that all too well, and that is precisely the reason why WSL exists.
ChuckNorris89
>Because it's adversarial. Your choice to use one OS makes it more difficult, in a tiny way, for me to use a different OS.

So I shouldn't be allowed to use a certain platform of my choice because you think this somehow impacts you?

Based on your logic how about you stop consuming water, oxygen, real-estate and food because it's making it more difficult for me, in a tiny way, to get those items.

>You will write software for that OS. You will convince others to use that OS. You will tell your boss to get computers with that OS installed

Please stop making false claims about me. You don't know me buddy.

[deleted]
(comment deleted)
dTal
Nobody said you shouldn't be allowed. But it does impact other people, and those people are also allowed to comment on it, or even put social pressure on you.

I'm not going to respond to the sentences you added after I posted this comment, because I don't think they add very much.

k8sToGo
Because I do not care about Linux Desktop.
sylens
I’m someone who generally doesn’t enjoy dual booting. I realize this is my specific preference rather than practicality, but I like being able to context switch without a reboot.

I also like that I can keep a lot of my development tools separated by WSL distro/container. A few weeks ago I found a video transcoding tool that needed a dependency from Ubuntu 18.04. I was using Ubuntu 20.04 in WSL at the time. So I just downloaded 18.04 from the Store, spun that up in a new terminal tab, and set up the transcoding tool there. I only access that version when I need to do certain transcoding and have preserved my 20.04 for everything else.

peatmonster
OP here.

Up until this point I've completely avoided Windows for work (for obvious reasons). I've exclusively used a Linux laptop for work.

I use Windows on my desktop as my home machine. WSL means I can train machine learning models in my time off, without stopping me chilling out with my buddies.

lostmsu
I have an opposite question: why not just use Windows?
ngcc_hk
Seem great why undervote it?
codingdave
> 21H2 cannot currently be updated to

FWIW, I just checked on my system, and it totally had the option to download and update to 21H2. Which I'm currently running. So it is available to some systems.

black3r
yep my system also has that option, although my laptop doesn't officially support Windows 11 so maybe there's that. I still don't understand Microsoft's arbitrary decision to not officially support my CPU (even though some Kaby Lake CPUs are supported and newer slower Pentiums are also supported smh)
supernovae
It’s because of security. If you don’t have the right chipset windows 11 is drastically slower than windows 10 on same hardware.

i’m kind of glad they kept the security in place for once rather than backwards compatible at all cost

you can force windows 11 if want to deal with the penalty. it will just warn you it doesn’t pass performance baseline - there are videos and websites that explain how to force it and ignore compatibility checks. just search for bypass system requirements windows 11

virgulino
My Windows 10 upgraded to 21H2 on November 19.
zeusk
They've been doing rolling updates since quite a bit now - every new major update is watched for things like badly behaving drivers and hardware, so instead of 100% population being affected it is more like 5% affected when they pause the rollout.
NGRhodes
Worth noting there are many different ways to get CUDA with WSL2 working.

If you follow the MS docs, they do not mention anything about install CUDA on the Linux VM, you do not get a functional setup to start using CUDA and if you follow Nvidia's documentation, they push you down the docker container route. I personally prefer to setup Tensorflow using Anaconda rather than pip.

A slight correct on the OP, the special driver NVIDIA mentions is for CUDA only (no display driver included), Nvidia does not "support" installing of their full display driver in WSL2 so YMMV in terms of reliability and performance.

I personally gave up on WSL2, not because of WSL2, but because it is so hard to use remotely (I do not have frequent local access to my GPU workstation). I tried various instructions and WSL2 itself was fine when used locally (via remote desktop), but networking scripts I found were unreliable, or if I used Windows openssh server it kept crashing and bash.exe is too limited to be useful, just not worth the hassle and effort when I can install Linux native.

password4321
I recommend Bitvise SSH Server for Windows, which I've used for 10 years. It's free for personal use (also a free trial).

As an aside: it supports blocking by client identifier, which completely shut down bot connections (and probably will until OpenSSH does the same).

vl
I used WSL2 with CUDA from linux for awhile, but forced update to Windows 11 (which broke everything) was a last straw for me.

I went back to dual boot configuration with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, and it saves so much time on fiddling with wsl, I highly recommend it.

peatmonster
Getting a working Windows 10 install without it being liable to break itself is such an involved process..
vijaybritto
Absolutely never had a single blue screen or random crash. Maybe its because its a laptop and not a hand built rig. Whats your's?
bshipp
I also attempted a move to Win11 for CUDA before reinstalling Win10. I keep WSL because having a resident Ubuntu environment to install and run various scripts and bash commands/programs is really handy and has little overhead.
zeusk
Just curious, why not RDP into Windows and use whatever you'd use locally to interact with WSL2?
Rucadi
There is no need to do the apt-key etc... the toolkit is already in the packages in newer versions of ubuntu.

Install the cuda driver: https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda/wsl

Install an ubuntu image using wsld, (wsld -i ubuntu -d cuda -o D:\.wsl2)

apt update && apt install nvidia-cuda-toolkit

Done.

For installing cudnn maybe is better to go to the installation guide: https://docs.nvidia.com/deeplearning/cudnn/install-guide/ind...

jcagalawan
The toolkit in the packages by default is old though. I was setting up JAX on a Ubuntu 20.04 WSL 2 install and it was complaining about ptxas being old and giving bad results.
ncmncm
We are not better off with CUDA working in My WSL. That keeps us confined to NVIDIA.

It suffices to have full Vulkan support. Then we can use Kompute, which is portable to any GPU, not just NVIDIA.

NGRhodes
Why Kompute and not OpenCL ?
ncmncm
Powerful forces drive Vulkan implementation. OpenCL is always an afterthought, where it even happens at all.
lostmsu
From the tutorial it is unclear what Kompute adds over raw Vulkan apart from Tensor type.
ncmncm
Its value is not so much in what it adds, but in what it subtracts: 2000 lines of boilerplate.
jonpalmisc
I don’t use Windows anymore so I don’t really have any investment in WSL, but I’m happy to keep seeing things in the WSL camp get even better. I’d argue WSL is the single best Windows innovation in years.
dgellow
- WSL2

- modern Windows Terminal

- winget

Things have become really cool for devs in the Windows world, I almost don’t have complaints these days :)

(other than GUI related stuff and that Windows Insider is really unstable, but I guess that’s on me for using the dev channel)

fartcannon
And all they had to do is hamfist an actual worthwhile operating system into their machines.
dgellow
People hate on Windows but I personally find Win32 and the NT kernel really cool. It’s a really interesting OS once you start digging into it.
fartcannon
The hate is for the business of Microsoft and the people who perpetrate it.
dgellow
I mean… you literally wrote “hamfist an actual worthwhile operating system into their machines” when talking about Linux running via WSL. If that’s not a vague critique towards Windows, the operating system, I don’t know what that is.
idatum
+1 on combination of WSL2 + Windows Terminal.

Use VSCode as Windows process (if you prefer) as your WSL2 editor; extensions can be installed on WSL2.

I also use Python + OpenCV4.5 + cudnn (CUDA) for computer vision work leveraging GPU compute.

Just an outstanding addition to Win10. WSLg on Win11 adds graphics and pulse audio.

sharken
I mistook WSL with CUDA support for WSLg. For WSLg you still need Windows 11 which is disappointing.
alerighi
Still WSL2 lacks of two fundamental things: the lack of bridge networking (being able to connect to a server running in the WSL from another host in the LAN) and the lack of sharing serial ports with the host (better would be USB devices, but at least WSL1 did share serial ports and since most microcontroller programs and debug with serial port it was sufficient).
_xerces_
You can work around the serial port issue using something like Comm Tunnel:

https://www.serialporttool.com/GK/comm-tunnel/

Open Comm Tunnel and setup for your com port (from device manager) and port 2101

Then in WSL2 use socat to connect: socat -d -d tcp-connect:172.18.96.1:2101 pty,raw,echo=0

It will output something like: >socat[18786] N PTY is /dev/pts/2

Then from within WSL2 you know to use '/dev/pts/2' as the COM port for serial and it will connect to the COM port.

It works most of the time for me, but Comm Port seems lag if the throughput gets too much for it to handle.

dTal
I, on the other hand, wish it to be as painful and frustrating to use as possible, so that developers are pushed into using (and therefore by extension maintaining and improving) the real thing. I do not wish Microsoft or their "embrace and extend" strategy well.

If Microsoft really "loved Linux" they'd release their own version of Wine. Let us use their programs on our OS, instead of vice versa! Never forget that this relationship is fundamentally adversarial.

Kwpolska
> * You MUST be on Windows 10 21H2 or above. 21H2 cannot currently be updated to (yeah, it's because they are pushing Windows 11) so you need to download it as an ISO.

You can also force an upgrade using Group Policy: https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/159624-how-specify-targe...

(this doesn’t work on the Home edition though)

sbarre
I feel like this isn't true.

21H2 didn't automatically update on my system but it was clearly available to me in Windows Update and I just clicked to update to it last week, and it did the update.

I'm on Windows 10 Home.

nopenopenopeno
WSL is so much extra work to maintain. I absolutely love running Ubuntu LTS as my daily OS. I use Wine to run Photoshop CC 2018 and Illustrator CC 2019, Nvidia drivers work excellently on Linux these days, and all my development tools just work. I dread the day I have to depend on anything else.
kuboble
So much extra work as compared with what? In my experience WSL is a godsend for those who have to work on windows and like to integrate Linux tools in daily work. Before there were things like cygwin, some ported tools, or Linux in vm. All limited and/or major pain to work with.
pletnes
No systemd/cron/…, one extra OS to patch/upgrade, slooow perf on NTFS, can’t ssh into it (trivially), the list goes on. It has its uses but linux has many other uses that it doesn’t reliably cover.
k8sToGo
Why would you want to SSH into WSL? Sounds to me you are not using WSL for what it is meant to be used.
ninkendo
Probably the same reason you’d want to SSH into any machine? You want to access a CLI, remotely, from another machine.
k8sToGo
That is not what WSL is about though. In that case you would probably want a proper VM or use the Windows OpenSSH Server and get into the WSL CLI that way.
pletnes
You’re right. I want Linux, full stop.
ninkendo
Why is it not what WSL is about, in particular? It works fine for me, am I doing things wrong? I don't want a "proper VM", I want something that has access to my windows filesystem, that I can SSH to. I also want to be able to run linux software from said CLI.
supernovae
service sshd start
ninkendo
WSL(2) has no bridge networking, so you need to do port forwarding in windows (and enable the port through windows firewall) to make this work. It’s not super hard, but not as trivial as it could be if there were tighter integration.
supernovae
I just followed Scott’s guide and there are easy scripts on github.
ninkendo
I mean sure, so did I. I'm just saying it's not as trivial as it could be. The script triggers a UAC prompt which means you can't just have it run automatically when the computer boots, it needs human intervention (if you have a better way, I'd love to hear it.)
lostmsu
Won't simply doing

ssh win-PC wsl

give you the same result as SSHing directly into WSL distro?

ninkendo
SSH'ing into the windows machine itself is a pretty useless feature for me. Windows' shell (cmd.exe) is awful, and as good as PowerShell may be, I never really learned it. I want a real unix/linux style environment.

So, having an SSH server in Windows, that only exists so I can run the `wsl` command, doesn't seem very useful. I'd rather the SSH server be hosted directly in the WSL VM itself and skip the intermediary step.

smoldesu
Yeah, I have to agree. Really the only thing keeping me on Windows was the state of Nvidia drivers on Linux, but a few years ago they became pretty usable on Xorg so I made the switch and haven't looked back. I did very much like WSL in my time using it, and it's integration with VS Code was sublime, but pulling the maintenance line for two systems drove me pretty crazy, pretty quickly.
peatmonster
Glad to hear that, the last time I tried running my GTX 1070 on Ubuntu the drivers weren't so great.
DarkmSparks
Why not just install any linux desktop + nvidia drivers?

Thats what all the historic stuff was written on.

Also, much better to go with opencl than cuda for new developments these days (unless you are being funded in one of the nvidia startup programs)

tester756
Does it mean that I can play games inside WSL so I don't have to install them on host?
peatmonster
I haven't tested this but in theory yes. This setup gives you working GPU support.
fartcannon
The man hours wasted just to perpatuate the entrenched old money empire of computer software boggles the mind. We are prisoners to this nonsense. It's so hard to watch.
supernovae
supposedly the right version of windows10 is hitting RTM builds here soon and no longer limited to dev channels.